The University of Chicago Magazine – Since the Soviet Union’s breakup, Grenoble has traveled to remote Siberian corners to document an endangered language called Evenki. Ethnic Evenkis constitute a Russian and Chinese minority of 35,000 nomadic hunters and reindeer herders, but only 5,000 of them use their eponymous language, and almost all mix it with Russian. Evenki speakers, Grenoble says, live in small villages of fewer than 200 residents.